Dear Margaret...God Be With You Till We Meet Again

That lovely poem by Ann Taylor: My Mother, has one beautiful paragraph that goes thus:

"Who sat and watched my infant head,

When sleeping on my cradle bed,

and tears of sweet affection shed?

my mother..."

Those affectionate tears, I haven't stopped shedding since Friday the 25th of August, 2017 when my entire world crashed.

On this day, I woke up at about 3am, reached for my phone and saw this message from my father telling me, his wife of 35 years, my mum, had passed on.

My Dad's message

I immediately broke down crying and this woke my wife up. When she saw the message she just hugged me and began to console me. I was beside myself with grief and cried myself to sleep again. Woke up crying and saw my family standing over me just looking/watching me. It was heart-wrenching to say the least.

Mum had been slightly ill for about 3 weeks and had been in and out of the NNPC Medical Center Warri, during the period before this message. She was discharged from the hospital on the Monday prior and I had last spoken to her on Wednesday before this UNBELIEVABLE Friday night message.

My mum had carried fibroids for quite some time, probably since my kid sister was born, refusing a surgical operation all these years because she was absolutely scared of surgeries and also because she believed her natural herbs would do a better job of curing her or a miracle will happen to heal it some day.

According to my own findings, it seems like the fibroids had pushed her intestines such that she now developed gastro-intestinal hernia. An operation was planned, cancelled, re-planned and cancelled because her blood pressure was high and her blood count was very poor. She was then "discharged to go recuperate" or fix those before any planned surgery can happen. Imagine the irony of discharging a patient to go home and recuperate for surgery. Such nonsense. Anyway, that's subject for another day but it is for this reason, I gave this admonition on Facebook sometime ago.

Facebook Admonition.

It was terrible news and I was 6,000 miles away, but luckily I was surrounded by my wife and our two year old daughter, who I noticed were always trying to follow me around the house. They probably thought I was going to cry myself to death as I grieved.

Mum and 1 yr old me

Growing up, I never heard my mum call me Frank. She called me Obehi all the time. I initially didn't like the name until she explained its meaning and why she named me that. It was a name that wasn't in any of my documents at that time so I always wondered why she called me that. The way she shouted the name into the street to call me back into the house whenever I was out playing was so funny to my playmates and they always teased me about it and tried to re-enact the shouting as well.

Asking my mum why she called me Obehi was the first deep conversation I ever had with her as she sat me down and told me about how sickly I was as an infant, not eating properly, always crying and almost never sleeping well. So in her tiredness and frustration at the situation she had always said to me and anyone who asked what was wrong with the child: OBEHIOYE; meaning: "This one is in the hands of God." 

In that same breath she would always pray that her next child should be the opposite of me and in answer to her prayers, two years later, my brother was born and he was almost the exact opposite. He ate well, slept properly and never cried unnecessarily. She was overjoyed.


That answered prayer and several other experiences cemented her belief in the Almighty and she taught us his ways via compulsory daily devotions at home and Sunday church attendance. The church attendance thing became a contentious subject as we grew older because we resisted due to how she had moved us from Mother of the Redeemer Catholic Church at Airport Junction to Christ Healing Temple of God Church on Izakpa road, behind the old airport and then later to Church of God Mission Intl. Inc. and lastly in 1998 to Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG).
 

Mum and Dad

I was probably already tired of this church movement, so sometimes I teased her asking which is the next church we will be moving to. Fortunately or Unfortunately too, a Nigerian musician, Tony One-Week, released a not-so-nice-but-very-funny song about people who moved form church to church but if we bring it up she would just smile and say: "Just love this God oh; na only him we get."

As we grew older, subtle singing to make a point became a thing and she would use singing to throw sublime messages at me and my siblings. For example she would get upset if any of us refused to join her to church on a given Sunday and compose her own song at us for not loving God enough as she had taught us. The day she realized I don't pay tithes was a singing competition. Boy, she went round the house singing different songs about tithes, blessings, God etc. It was always so funny. 

We sang at her too and the one she loved from me most was whenever I sang Boyz2Men's "Mama" to her. She loved it so much that even during phone conversations after I was grown and had left the house, she would remind me: "Obehi, it's been long you sang that Mama song for me oh" and I would sing to end the conversation.

As a growing child, you learn so many things from your parents consciously or unconsciously and one of the biggest lessons I learnt from my mum is KINDNESS; speaking with kindness, listening with kindness and being generous with you resources. This, she taught us directly and indirectly in roundabout ways.

She was fond of saying: "No matter what you do, it's the ones you didn't do, that they'll remember; but be kind anyway".

In my opinion, It's a way to say: Don't feel bad when you're not appreciated. Don't also feel bad if you can't do much but don't let that lack of appreciation stop you from doing good.

As a public primary school teacher, a lot of her pay and resources went to supporting her students with fees, lunch, uniforms and even groceries. She would spend her little resources to ensure the kids in her class don't go back home hungry if they came to school without lunch.

Her neighbours in Osubi, Delta state felt her kindness after they moved there from the heart of Effurun, in 2004. Being one of the few houses with a generator to pump water when there hasn't been power for days or weeks, she flung her gates open for less fortunate neighbours to come get water for their use until power is restored.

My mum's kindness to us, was reflected in the miscellaneous funds she supported us with as we progressed through higher education. While my dad required that you budget and explain most expenses, her gifts were the ones you got and use to 'see front' as Warri would say, when the budget from dad is exhausted. 

Her kindness to her relatives was evident in how she housed a few and supported their education while they lived with us. This was how we met most of her younger sisters and brothers. Our house was an open revolving door for her siblings who returned the favour by caring for us, her young children.

I would say I really loved my mum, even though the very first time I ever uttered the words "I love you" to her must've been after I got married to my wife, who taught me how to say it to people I really care about, from friends to parents to siblings. My wife told my own parents, "I love you" before me their son ever said it. We, talk I love you ke? For this African home? You better go and eat your afternoon food, make you know say dem love you. Lol 

April 19th, 2014: At my traditional wedding in Okuta-Ebele, Edo state.

We all have stories of how our African parents disciplined us their children, but my mum wasn't the type to use cane on us. While my dad did discipline us regularly with canes and what not, there is only time I ever recall my mum using a cane, it was more like a tree branch and boy, she went for the entire body.  That was the only time I remember she caned me. I probably swore never to cross her path again cos being caned all over your body was worse than just your hand or butt.

As a school teacher herself, my mum tried to protect us from vices in this world as much as she could. She opened up to me at some point that the reason she chose to be a teacher was so that she could help her own kids through school and also be present in our lives. She chose it so that whenever we closed from school and got back home she would be home to receive us and when we were on holidays she would also be on holidays ensuring that we don't go into the streets all day.

In protecting us, I remember on one particular day she found a 'love letter' in my school shorts from a girl on the same street. Unknown to me, my mum marched to their house and warned the girl in front of her parents not to come and 'spoil' her beloved son (Lol). She only told me about finding the letter few days after she had gone to warn/embarrass the young lady. I was very shocked and laughed it away but that was one of the most embarrassing event of my adolescent life because after then any small hello to females in the neighbourhood and the next thing I will hear is "Frank, please I don't want your mum to come and fight me oh". Nor be small thing that year. 😁😁

That event would come to haunt her much later. When I was done with school and working, she began to disturb me to bring a girl home as she thought I should be planning to get married and settle down. I would jokingly remind her that she had chased my first love away so I would never get married. The thought scared her so much I became a prayer point and she began to be very nice to any and every lady she saw me with. She dared not speak to them just to be in my good graces and would only talk to me later to tell me what she thought about them.

Oh how happy she was when I finally brought someone home and confidently told her this was the one. She was probably happier than me on my wedding day. 😂😂

May 3rd, 2014: With Mum and Dad on my wedding day.

My younger sister, had gotten married the year before and she was really worried for me, so the joy was palpable. Whose mother wouldn't be happy when their 32 year old first son finally decides to get married after he had told her several times to leave him alone as marriage wasn't on his mind at all after all she chased his "first love" away. 

After my first child was born in 2015, my mum first visited us in Port-Harcourt and stayed with us for just two weeks. She loved her job so much she didn't want to take extended vacations so it didn't jeopardize her job and her students' upbringing. She would visit more periods later and during her visits, I would take pictures and record videos of her as she took care of her grandchild. Those pictures and videos were recorded in an Amazon Kindle that crashed much later but I still caress that kindle till today in hopes that someday I will have it fixed to retrieve those memories.

A happy Grandma

The demise of a loved-one, especially a parent, is the kind of event that makes your phone ring with calls from people who wouldn't have called you in a million years and this was part of my experience in the weeks that followed her demise. While I appreciate all the condolences, I found it confusing whenever someone said: "God has called her"; "That is how God wanted it"; "We cannot question God". Though my mum was very religious and raised us in the fear of God, I must say I felt really betrayed by the God that would let my mum die at 50+ and put me through such pain 🙄🙄🙄.

Within the next few days we were already making arrangements to have her buried before the end of September.

The last time I saw my mum was in April, 2017 when we all attended the wedding of a cousin in Uromi, Edo State. I had driven from Port-Harcourt where I now lived with my family, while she and my dad had gone there from their base in Warri.

I had to leave them in Uromi as I was headed to Lagos for the rest of my vacation.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I was not able to physically attend the burial of my mum and that is probably why the pain I felt increased and lasted real long. Thankfully, my sister and I devised a way for me to participate virtually via new Instagram accounts solely for that purpose and I'll always be grateful to her for that wisdom and gesture.

I was going to be 35 that month of her burial and by God, I never imagined I would ever see my mum on an obituary poster that early in my life. Seeing the obituary poster broke me further, brought more tears and it finally dawned on me that this was real but alas, life happens or should I say, death happens to us all at the end of it all.

My mum was born Margaret Igberaese on October 13th, 1962 in Eror, Uromi and started her primary and secondary school education right there in Eror, Uromi.

She would later move to the northern part of present-day Edo state to continue/complete her secondary education at Ogieneni Girls Grammar School in Uzairue near Auchi. There she made a lot of friends she carried into adulthood, some of whom we met and became family friends with along the way. All her friends and close relatives called her Maggie, like the Maggi cube and it used to be so funny to us.

It was also while at that school and the Auchi environment she picked up and mastered the Etsako and Hausa languages which she spoke fluently and it used to just amaze me. She also spoke Urhobo quite well, having lived in Sapele and Warri throughout this time.

Finishing secondary school, she joined one of her elder sisters in Sapele, Delta state and that was where she met my dad who was already working at the African Timber and Plywood company in Sapele and then they began a relationship.

By the beginning of 1982, they had gotten married and moved to Warri as my dad had changed jobs into the new budding Oil Industry in Warri and environs.

Not one to just be a housewife, she decided to go back to school even while pregnant with me and so joined the Teacher's Training School domiciled in Nana College, Warri and few weeks after my birth that September had obtained the TC2 certificate as it was then called. By the end of that year she was just twenty years old.

By 1986, after bouncing around several odd teaching jobs, now with two young children of her own, she joined the Bendel State Teaching Service and became a primary school teacher, shaping the minds of young promising children across the south of Bendel State. As we grew up, she was transferred from school to school within the teaching service; From Ojojo primary school, to Ogbe, to Esedo, to Ekpan, to Alegbo, to Army Day and so on and so forth. 

First time I observed my mum really worried and agitated was when Bendel state was divided into Edo and Delta state in 1991. It was agitating to her because as an Edo indigene who is a teacher in schools across Delta state, there was the threat that all Edo indigenes would be disengaged from the teaching service of the new Delta State. It was a very testy period for her career but was somehow resolved and she remained in Delta State.

Seeking to grow in her career, she sought and got admitted in the College of Education, Warri, where after a few years she obtained the National Certificate of Education (NCE). This she did even while working and caring for us her children, which had become four by 1992. 

Sometime in 2005, while I was in my final year of undergraduate studies and about to graduate from UNIBEN, my mum informed me that she would be joining the part time study program of UNIPORT in a quest to obtain a Bachelors of Education. After laughing hard and asking if she was serious, I encouraged her to go for it.

Despite studying as an older person, my mum put in all the work and wasn't shy to call on us her children for help with research or to breakdown concepts or solve arithmetic problems. So you can say we all studied together. By 2010, she was done with the program and had obtained her B.Ed and we were all so happy and proud.

My mum's demise, changed the dynamics of our family as well as so much of my philosophy to life and death, one of which is captured in the image below, but in all we can only look to the Almighty with our questions. 

We buried my mum two weeks before my 35th birthday and titled her burial program, "Earth's loss, Heaven's gain" because we were genuinely hurt and believe someone with her kind heart shouldn't have died so soon but were consoled by our Christian belief that death is not the end, just a transition to be with the Almighty creator.

Considering the godly, peaceful, generous and caring life she had lived we were convinced she had gone to be with her Lord and Saviour. 

My dear Margaret... God be with you till we meet again on the resurrection morning.

I will love and miss you always.

This goes to thank friends and family who consoled us, condoled with us and stood beside us in our time of deep grief. I'll always be grateful for your sacrifice and care.

God bless.

OBEHIOYE.